Home Read Steve Schmolaris’s Album Review: Discount Coffin | Demo

Steve Schmolaris’s Album Review: Discount Coffin | Demo

Why not recreate Edgar Allen Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death?

Every family has its lore. In House Schmolaris, one of the more juicier (and spookier) stories involves Edgar Allen Poe; in the early 19th century, one of my ancestors – it changes with the storyteller: sometimes a direct ancestor, sometimes an uncle – had the pleasure of attending a party with Mr. Poe. The reason why said ancestor was in America was never clear, but this party, or so it was claimed, was the inspiration for The Masque of the Red Death.

Mr. Poe was, of course, drunk, and, in all likelihood, so was Ancestor Schmolaris. Deep in the dizziness of inebriation, Ancestor Schmolaris suggested they play a prank on the generous host, who was well known to be fearful of contagion. Whether it was Ancestor Schmolaris or whether it was Poe himself that donned the claret-stained curtain changes with the storyteller, but regardless, whoever it was, the act gave the host – who would become Prince Prospero in Poe’s gothic tale – such a fright that all concerned, including Poe and Ancestor Schmolaris, thought that he had died right there and then.

It was just such a tall tale that inspired much more recent events at the Schmolaris mansion in East Schmelkirk. Being a social butterfly myself, the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were – to put it lightly – an adjustment. Prior to the pandemic, it was not uncommon for me to, as it were, play Prince Prospero, and my parties were, and remain, the stuff of legend. And so, when the pandemic swept through Manitoba, I, like many others, faced our potential mortality single-handed. (Or as single-handed as I could, given the plethora of staff that the Schmolaris mansion requires for its daily operations.)

Captured in the throes of despair to which such isolation gives rise, I was struck by a brilliant idea. Why not recreate Edgar Allen Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death? Here I am in a mansion worthy of the castle described in the story. Here, also, was the plague for which the Prince tried to keep outside its thick and gated walls; here was our own Red Death. Immediately, I had my staff dress the room as did Prince Prospero: with blues and purples and greens and oranges and whites and bloody reds. And, even despite the threat of “red death”, the thousands of invitations that were sent out were promptly RSVP-ed, the majority in the positive.

My entrance, however, would not be as that of Prospero’s. Rather, I would be the grim specter, the blood-bespeckled figure draped in a roughly shorn shroud, that caused such terror and fright and death in the story.

I would hide in a coffin, placed conspicuously in the red room, which was where both the dancing floor and fully-stocked bar were located, thus ensuring high traffic. The coffin was crowned with an abundance of flowers, picked by my fastidious gardener Sven; a corona, in homage to our plague; and their licentious fragrances poured out of their spread-eagled petals in glorious sluttery.

Thusly, I hid, and thusly was I surrounded by friends and friends of friends who, under their hideous masques, masked in N-95s.

My plan was to play the vile corpse, resting peacefully inside the closed casket, and as soon as all were in attendance, I would pop out, scare the lot of them, and in doing so make a rakish yet glamourous entrance, and set the night for one of garrulous excess and gratuitous abundance.

So there I lay, mauve roses bunched in around my head and crossed arms, almost as if they were packing foam popcorn. It was a delightful smell, and one I hoped made it seem like it was covering up for the stale stench of death. I heard the band begin to play – it was a dark and sinister synth-y song that I later learned was called Mind of Its Own – and that I knew was my cue to emerge.

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To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.

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Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, “the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,” which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, “the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,” left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists’ songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.